The Final Reckoning (33 page)

Tom hurtled out of the office, heading first for the lifts then, thinking better of it, shouldering his way into the fire escape: taking the stairs reduced the risk of a collision with someone he knew.

He ran down the stairs as fast as he could, clutching the banister so that he could vault the final three or even four steps, leaping into the air and pounding onto successive landings. He emerged from the fire escape on the third floor, disappearing as invisibly as he could into the throng. He couldn't afford to run; too noticeable. Instead he walked at his briskest pace, past the gifts of Maoist kitsch from the People's Republic, past the glass case displaying a traditional Thai logboat. He took the stairs to the second floor, ignoring the memorial exhibit of molten bottles and charred coins salvaged from Hiroshima. One more flight down and he was, at last, by the ceiling-high stained-glass Chagall window with its
pale moons, eerie blues and desperate mothers clinging to their swaddled babies. The Peace Window, they called it, even though it had always struck Tom as reeking of the sadness of war.

He stopped, breathing heavily. There were no tourists milling around; he was alone. Only a hunch had brought him here. Rebecca had asked Henning if the meeting could be somewhere quiet, somewhere that was not ‘grand’. If he knew Henning, and he did, the German would have brought her to this place.

They called it the meditation chapel. It was a plain dark room. There were no religious symbols, no holy texts, no books or artworks at all. It was meant to be ‘multi-faith’, even if that meant it was essentially an empty space. There were benches to sit on but they were rarely used. Tom had come here once or twice, including late at night after a particularly terrible session in his office, wading through eye-witness testimonies. But most UN staff could work in the place for twenty years and not even know it was there.

Not Henning though. He had been one of those adamant that the entrance to the area should become a memorial for those who had fallen serving the UN. There was a plaque for Count Bernadotte, the diplomat assassinated in Jerusalem, as well as the torn flag of the United Nations mission, bombed in Baghdad in 2003. To Henning at least, the meditation chapel meant something. Besides, he probably calculated that this location
would give the UN some precious moral high ground for its meeting with Rebecca.

Tom tried to steady himself. He didn't know what he was going to find. He wanted to think, to work out what he would say or do, but there was no time. He walked through the partitioned walls – there was no door – and he knew he had been right.

They were both there, Rebecca and him. No one else, just as Henning had promised. No aides, no advisers – precisely as Tom had requested. Him and her alone, facing each other.

The change in the light meant they both turned around as Tom walked forward. Tom could see that Rebecca was aghast – with surprise, with confusion, he couldn't tell – but his gaze did not linger. It was not her he wanted to examine.

Instead he peered hard at the features of the man. Tom had never worked with him; his appointment had come long after Tom had fled for the corporate hills. But his face had become familiar in the last few weeks, at least to those who followed the politics of this place. It had been in the papers, on TV. The high forehead, the combed back, silver-grey hair, the wide mouth and firm, sharp nose. He was tall, too, elegant in a dark, tailored suit and perfectly knotted tie.

But it was not the similarity of the real man to the TV likeness that Tom was trying to make out. Rather he was comparing the face before him with the image he had seen just five minutes earlier
on the computer screen. Was there room for doubt? Even in this gloom, Tom was sure there was not. He would have been ready to swear under oath that the man he was looking at and the teenage Fascist thug of Kovno's Ninth Fort were one and the same man. He knew that the eager participant in the massacre of the Jews of that town, a minor but murderous accomplice in the greatest crime of the twentieth century, was standing before him as the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

‘Tom, get away. This has nothing to do with you.’ Rebecca's tone was different, harder than he had ever heard before. And yet there was something else in the voice too. Not just anger, but anxiety. The muscles around her mouth seemed to be trembling.

‘Rebecca, just talk to me. What are you doing?’

‘I mean it, Tom.’ She was restraining herself, striving hard not to shout. ‘Just turn around and go away.’

Tom looked over at Paavo Viren, who stood frozen in his suit. For the first time, Tom could see that his face, usually a model of statesmanlike composure, was drawn, ashen.

‘Rebecca, I've seen the photographs.
Remember Kadish.’

‘So you know?’

Only then did he realize, in a fleeting moment of self-awareness, that he had assumed she did not know. He had
wanted
her not to know. He
had told himself that, despite the pages stashed in the fountain pen, she had never fully understood her father's message, that she had not looked at the photographs of George Kadish. He had, Tom understood now, clung to the belief that Rebecca had demanded to see the Secretary-General for the sole purpose of hearing an official apology for the mistaken killing of her father. Now he could see the truth. He nodded to Rebecca. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘I'm sorry, Tom. I'm really sorry.’

‘Why are you apolog—’ And then he stopped himself. ‘Oh I see. Now I see very well, Rebecca.’

‘It's not like that, Tom.’

‘Is that what this whole thing was about? Is that what I was to you: a ticket into this place?’

‘Don't, Tom.’

His brain seemed to overflow with a whole new set of understandings, arriving in waves, one after another. She had wanted to be rid of him at first, but then suddenly she had softened, pleading with him for his help. He had thought that was simply because she was frightened by the break-in. Now he realized she had seen his potential: with Tom at her side, she had a chance of penetrating the heart of the United Nations, reaching the Secretary-General himself – with the chance to complete her father's unfinished business.

He remembered their kiss: it had come once he told her that he not only understood what her father and DIN had done, but that he agreed with it.
Given everything that had happened to them, they
were right: they weren't going to get justice any other way.
Perhaps that was the moment she let down her guard, seeing Tom as a kindred spirit, a comrade in the struggle for vengeance. Or maybe it was more calculating than that. Maybe she had concluded that to rely absolutely on Tom to get her inside UN Plaza, she would first have to cloud his judgement…

When had her deception begun? Was it the moment he confronted her with evidence of Gerald Merton's meeting with the Russian and the discovery of an assassin's weapon? That was when she had thrust the notebook in his hand, telling him to read it in full. At the time, he'd assumed that had been aimed at making Tom and the UN back off from accusing Merton of being a hitman. But she had torn out the crucial pages: she was playing a game even then.

And the robbery? That was surely when she understood that this went way beyond her and her father and that she would need some serious help. Who better than a man who knew only those parts of the story she chose to reveal to him – a man backed by the heft of the UN and with the ability to bring her face to face with her ultimate target?

‘How many others know about this wild story of yours?’ Paavo Viren stepped back and raised himself to his full height, trying to take command of the room. His accent was somewhere between Scandinavian and international diplomat, that
peculiar brand of English as global
lingua franca
, all traces of geography flattened out.

‘I've not told anybody,’ Rebecca said. ‘Tom worked it out for himself. Like I said, this is between you and me.’ And she turned to glare at Tom, her eyes imploring him to back off.

Viren spoke again. ‘Since Mr Byrne is here, perhaps you can explain to him what it is exactly that you want. Because I am still unclear.’

Rebecca leaned closer towards him. ‘I want you to tell me the truth. That's all you have to do. After all these years, it's too late for anything else. But the victims deserve that. They deserve at least that.’

‘You want me to start confessing to you, in this chapel?’ He gave a snort of mockery. ‘Are you some kind of priest?’

‘I've told you, we have the evidence. There is a photograph of you, herding Jews to their deaths in the Ninth Fort. No one noticed it before because no one knew your face, at least no one who cared. But now people care very much.’

‘I know this photograph.’ He paused then let his mouth widen into a joyless smile. ‘That surprises you, yes? Of course, I have seen it. Perhaps there is a vague resemblance, but nothing more than that. The idea that this would count as evidence is laughable. You're too young to remember the Demanjuk trial, Ms Merton. But perhaps you, Mr Byrne, remember it?’

Viren turned to Tom. It was a familiar
manoeuvre, the attempt to co-opt the minor opponent, in order to isolate the major one. He wanted Tom to side with him against Rebecca.

‘I remember it.’

‘They called him Ivan the Terrible. Some car worker in Ohio.’ He pronounced the name as if it were an exotic, fairytale place, separating each syllable: O-hi-O. ‘All because of a photograph of him as a young man. Even the court in Israel could not convict him. A case of mistaken identity, that was the final judgement. And the Demanjuk photograph was of an adult. This picture you have is of a boy, a teenage boy. People's looks change so much between this age and adulthood. You don't have “evidence”. You have a baseless accusation.’

‘So why don't you walk out?’ It was Tom, standing in the shadows.

‘What?’

‘If this is all baseless nonsense, why are you still here? You've been talking to Rebecca Merton for—’ Tom made a show of checking his watch, ‘quite a while. If this was all slanderous rubbish, you'd have walked out by now. You'd have summoned your aides. Henning Munchau would be here, drafting a writ of slander. You'd have called Security. But I'm looking around and I don't see anybody here. Now why would that be?’

Viren lifted his chin, as if making a more thorough assessment of Tom Byrne. ‘I'm trying to be
humane to Ms Merton. She's clearly a lady in some dist—’

‘Really? Or is it because you don't want anybody else, not even a security guard, to hear what she has to say?’

The SG began to pace, half-turning his back on Rebecca. The movement made her flinch. For the first time, Tom wondered whether the man was armed in some way – an absurd thought, he realized, as soon as he had formulated it. Even so, Rebecca had been brave confronting him alone like this. He was not young, that was true, but he was not frail; he could have overwhelmed her, he could have—

‘Do you know how old I am?’

The question hung in the air. The longer it lingered, the more it made Tom feel unsteady. The physical resemblance in the photograph had been so striking, he had not even considered basic matters like age and chronology. Now, though, his memory spooled back to the way he had come across the picture: the discovery of the name ‘Kadish’, the search in the photographer's online archive for an image that might connect to Gershon's story, then finding one that seemed to make sense of everything, right down to the word ‘March’ in the caption. A snapshot that showed at last why Gerald Merton had embarked on a final mission to New York, to the steps of the United Nations headquarters.

But perhaps Tom had made an elementary error: perhaps he had seen what he had wanted
to see. Police officers did it all the time, following a pattern of apparent evidence to a conclusion that fitted their first assumptions. It was a universal, human failing; we are suggestible creatures. How else did optical illusions work, except by relying on the eye's habit of seeing what it expected rather than what was actually there?

Rebecca broke the silence. ‘Your official biography says you're sixty-eight.’

‘Good, Ms Merton. You have done your homework. My biography says I am sixty-eight because I am sixty-eight. And how's your mental arithmetic? Because mine is quite good and it says that I was five years old when the war ended. Five! We can agree that the man in your photograph was more than five years old, yes?’ The smile again, this time with more enthusiasm.

‘You lied about your age.’

‘What, for all these years? Do I look seventy-eight to you?’

Rebecca shot back. ‘My father didn't look his age either. He was fit and strong. He could have passed for sixty-eight too.’

Tom could feel his knees weakening. What if Rebecca was wrong? What if Gershon Matzkin had got it wrong? There had been no DIN organization any more, just an elderly, lonely Gerald Merton at home, probably scouring the internet, struck by the physical similarity of a newly public figure to a hated face in an ancient photograph. They were making a terrible mistake.

But Rebecca had not budged. Instead she was standing even closer to Viren, examining him as if he were one of her patients.

‘Oh, there's no hiding that, though, is there, Mr Secretary-General? That line around the ear always gives it away. You've had some work done here, I can tell.’

‘So what? A little cosmetic surgery is nothing to be ashamed of in this day and age. Just ask the prime minister of Italy. Human vanity is no crime, Dr Merton.’ Then, as if he could sense Tom wavering: ‘Besides, and this you must know already, I am not Lithuanian. I am Finnish, for heaven's sake. I served as the foreign minister of that country. I am the wrong age and the wrong nationality – which means you have the wrong man.’

Tom looked down at his feet. He would need all his lawyerly skills to resolve this situation. He would have to offer an apology, explaining that both he and Rebecca Merton had been under extreme stress, and that they withdrew their accusation, undertaking never to repeat it. None of this would be put in writing, lest such a document itself, even in refuting the charge, be taken as grounds for suspicion. And Dr Merton would waive any claims for compensation for the death of her father. Tom would sketch out the broad terms to the SG now, then work out the detail with Henning later.

He stepped towards Rebecca, aiming to place a gentle hand on her arm and guide her out of the
chapel. He hoped she would not make a scene. But the instant he moved, she wheeled around and gave him a look that froze him.

‘Don't disappoint me, Tom.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don't think so little of me. Or my father.’

‘I don't under—’

‘Do you really think he would have come here, ready the way he was ready, if he wasn't certain? Dead certain, that this man is exactly who he thought he was? Do you think I would be here now if
I
wasn't certain?’

‘But it's just one photograph.’

‘Oh no, Tom. There are many more photographs of this man. He was one of the stars of the ghetto, weren't you, Mr Secretary-General?’

Tom looked at the SG – who had the same pitying expression fixed on his face – then back at Rebecca. ‘There are more photos?’

‘Yes, there are more. They weren't all taken by Kadish either. Lots were taken by the Nazis themselves. Half a dozen at least, some quite formal, some casual, the boys joshing around. Like a team photo. And young Paavo Viren, or whatever his name was then, always in the middle: the team mascot.’

‘But he's just sixty-eight.’

‘He lied about his age. Plenty of the young ones did. They got new papers, adding ten years to their date of birth. Once they were in their late twenties, it all sounded plausible enough. It was easy.
Remember, they had a whole lot of people to help them.’

‘He's from Finland.’

‘He
went
to Finland, Tom. Not the same thing. Some went to Canada, some to Ohio,’ she glanced back at the SG, ‘some even went to Germany, for Christ's sake. They started over: new lives, new names. Finland was a good choice: hardly any Jews there, and certainly no survivors of Kovno. No one who would remember.’

Tom looked at her, imagining how she appeared in Viren's eyes: a crazed, deluded young woman. ‘Where is all this evidence, Rebecca?’ Tom hated how his voice sounded, sceptical, prosecutorial – as if he were doing the SG's work for him.

‘It was all there, in London, in a file. But it was taken. One of the first things they took.’

‘From your father's flat or from yours?’

Her delay in answering suggested she understood the significance of the question. ‘From mine.’

‘So you've known this all along.’

‘My father told me what he was doing before he went to New York.’

Tom nodded, a gesture that was not meant to convey acceptance so much as a pause, a timeout in which he could digest what she was telling him. ‘And what else did you know, Rebecca?’

‘I knew about DIN. But not the rest, I swear. The break-in made no sense to me. The bakery, Tochnit Aleph – I never knew anything about that. You have to believe me.’

‘It makes no sense, Rebecca. Why would your father tell you about DIN and keep the rest secret?’

‘I've tried to work that out, Tom, really I have. All I can think of is that my father was ashamed. Plan A was
random.
It was indiscriminate. The DIN I knew of only went after the guilty. But if I knew about Plan B I'd find out about Plan A. And if I knew that, then I think my father believed I'd stop loving him.’

Viren cleared his throat, as if he were politely requesting his moment at the podium. ‘You say this so-called “evidence” has vanished? It has been stolen?’

Rebecca did not answer. Tom said nothing.

‘So we are back where we started, correct? Back with a wild claim?’

Tom was struck again by the simple fact that Viren was still here. Rebecca did not have him at gunpoint; she had no physical leverage over him at all. Yet here he still was. Why?

Rebecca now walked back a couple of paces, coming closer to Tom. Once there, she faced the SG and raised her voice a notch. ‘I'll leave you alone. I'll drop these claims. I'll never make them again.’

‘Dr Merton, I'm glad to hear—’